©2010 Tom Weathers
Posts from the Blind Cat blog recounting events that took place the first month after Brenda died (on December 9th) and concluding with the trip to the Outer Banks to scatter her ashes in the cold wind at the old Light House.
(...Yancie did one handful. Some of the powder whirled back to brush her face.)
Many of these stories are about the mechanics of grief - getting used to Brenda being gone because I never really thought it would happen, starting to deal with her stuff (that will be ongoing), trying to find new ways to be.
Stories about outings with a friend (Ishmael) during this period are in the next chapter. Some of that might be a little funny.
(There might also be some humor in my account of Christmas eve on Day 16. And I suppose the part about the chickens at the big fancy funeral home where we had the visitation might be funny. Brenda would have liked the chickens. She could see the humor in things. After my step-mother died she and my sister and the funeral director laughed when the cortege drove into Sunset Cemetery and Brenda blurted out "It's gone" referring to the bust on the big tomb stone that famous local politician O.Max Gardner had erected in honor of himself.)
But most of it isn't funny.
The stories were written on or just after the indicated days.
3:00 AM Tai Chi (Day 2)
At 3:00 AM last night and the night before, I did tai chi (the Yang short form taught to me by Thom Effird in 1990). I stood in front of the big TV not ready yet for silence. Surprisingly my balance was OK and my moves were fairly smooth. I managed to coordinate breathing and movement.
(I've been staying at my daughter and son-in-law's house, soothed and distracted by the sweetness and madness of my grandchildren. But I still can't sleep through the night despite the sleeping pills Dr. Beatty prescribed.)
Nothing magical happened; there was no detectable surge of chi.
However I didn't harden my outward moves into strikes when my breath left my body. I kept my hands soft.
Visitation (Day 3)
The visitation was nice. It was held at Cecil Burton's funeral home in Shelby. It is in a classy old white frame mansion that once belonged to the Thompson family. My mother and father were working in the Thompson lumber company and casket shop in 1939 when I was born. Cecil keeps six chickens out back, a tasteful distance from the mansion. They belong to his daughter. He eats the eggs. Sometimes the chickens run loose and have been known to come up to the elegant French doors during a viewing or reception.
Most of Brenda's former coworkers from the Department of Transportation were there, some old classmates and friends and two blood relatives - one of her cousins who happened to be in town and one of mine. (Neither of our families were/are big on staying in touch. My cousin Don and I swore to surprise one another and visit. I hope we do. I had forgotten what a smart dignified guy he is.)
Yancie and Allie (who looked very pretty in a black dress with a big pin) stayed in place greeting people who came by while I worked the crowd, shaking hands, clutching elbows, patting backs, maybe hugging some of my old female friends a little too long. Looking at myself from outside myself I couldn't decide whether I was appalled or amused. Randy who is a programmer spent a lot of time with Yudi and Larry two of my old friends who are also programmers.
Pictures of Brenda were on display showing her at various times of her life. There was the one black and white I especially like of her standing beside her family's Pontiac. Her hair was short and blond and her arms were shapely and bare. She leaned against the car, one foot thrust slightly forward in a model's pose which I know was natural and not calculated. Every guy of a certain age who stopped at that display looked at Brenda, said she was beautiful, then tried to guess the age of the Pontiac.
Maybe the saddest thing was one of Brenda's oldest and best friends who came despite an injury and illness. His partner and I had to half carry him to a chair where he sat crying and sleeping while I performed.
Gathering Up Stuff (Day 4)
Yesterday Yancie and Allie came over to help me gather up the most visible reminders, closet clothes, cosmetics, mostly things that could be seen. She took them home in nice new plastic bins and will probably keep them forever. We debated about the best thing to do - to leave the things out or to move them. Both choices were painful but I did not think I could stand to see everything, especially in the state they were - as scattered detritus of the last weeks of illness.
Both of us cried a lot. But Allie helped, placing items in bags and boxes, some designated as valuable and some as trash. Naturally she had to be told what most things were.
I don't remember where we put the half-smoked cigarette we found behind some creams and cosmetics. But we did keep the little Altoids tin of emergency cigarettes that Brenda held on to even after she stopped smoking back in July.
There is still a lot of stuff left. Except for going through necessary papers and disposing of some of the cardboard boxes I won't touch the remainder for a while if ever. She is everywhere. This morning when I was putting up dishes, I placed her plate in the cabinet. I always ate on the blue plate and she ate on the white plate. The white plate came from her mother and she was sentimental about it.
Coming Home (Day 4)
Saturday night, after going to out to supper with Yancie and her brood, I came back to the house to spend the night. It was the first time since Brenda died.
I don't remember my exact progression from room to room. I probably spent some time in my office/bedroom with the computer. Then after steeling myself to go to Brenda's bedroom and get a blanket I moved to the den. I turned up the fire logs and watched some of Jeremiah Johnson and then some of something else. Nothing made much sense.
After getting sleepy I left the den and went into the kitchen. I planned to return to my room to spend the night. However, Pye, the cat who used to sleep with Brenda came out from wherever she had been hiding and spoke to me and I followed her into Brenda's bedroom. Pye waited on the bed looking at me. I imagined that she was asking where Brenda was. I turned on Brenda's TV and lay down on the bed and Pye let me rub her. But when I lost it, she hopped off the bed and went back to her hiding place.
(Pye and I used to fight about Brenda. Pye wanted to sit on her, getting more insistent as Brenda got sicker. Knowing the cat would wake Brenda up and set off a new round of moaning and panicky breathing I would run her off. But if Brenda was awake, she would tell me to leave Pye alone - that I was making things worse.)
After Pye left, I got up, took one of Dr. Beatty's sleeping pills, and went to my room. I turned on the Beattles' CD took off my clothes and crawled in bed. That worked. I slept almost eight hours.
The next day I had brunch with Steve then braved the drizzle to walk with him in Freedom park. The drizzle was nice. That night I went out to dinner with Yancie, her brood and her inlaws. When I got home there were a few emails waiting from friends.
But the house was just as empty, just as freakish.
Visit to Shelby (Day 13)
Randomly...
After stopping by the Register of Deeds office in Gastonia to buy certified copies of Brenda's death certificate I went to Shelby.
I dropped by the hospital to see Brenda's old friend Vernon. He's got a bad infection. Going back briefly into caregiver mode I moved flowers so he could see them and asked somebody to raise his bed so that he could eat the food they brought just before I left.
Returning downtown I parked on the square across from the Methodist church where I would attend a funeral in a few hours and walked to the Shelby Cafe for lunch. Everything reminds me of Brenda now so as I sat in the new part (where the old Shelby Newsstand used to be, where I used to buy science fiction novels) and remembered other times when we were in this place. Both of us liked the pre-gentrified version best. Her favorite food, before she became a vegetarian was hamburger steak smothered in onions,
I went for a walk to kill some time before the funeral.
I walked past the place where I first saw Brenda. It was probably 1952; she would have been 12 and I would have been 13. It was in front of the old Junior High school on Saturday afternoon. Brenda and her cousin Carol had probably been to a movie and were walking home to Brenda's house on Blanton Street (where she and I would live 10 years later). I was with Pete Panther. He and I used to hang out at Carol's house. Maybe we were waiting for her, knowing that she was going to a movie. I had never met Brenda. Years later neither she nor Carol remembered the encounter. But I do. If the word had been in my vocabulary I would probably said that she was exquisite. Not voluptuous and blond like my dream girls. Simply lovely. She was vulnerable and shy and sweet too. I did have enough sense to realize that even if I didn't know how to say it.
I walked through the cemetery, a pretty place which was on my Shelby walking circuit even in less morbid times. Although Brenda will never be there I asked her out loud when passing her parents or friends if she had stopped here for a visit. I concocted a theory in which spirits or at least the remaining points-of-view are at the instant of death free to visit anywhere and anytime.
After walking for an hour I went back downtown to the church. Charles, with whom I traded Hardy Boy books 60 years ago, was having a funeral for his wife Cynthia. They too had been married 48 years and she too had suffered from emphysema. I have only been in Central Methodist a few times since my teens. It is still a lovely place. As the well-dressed members of Shelby's upper class filled the place I remembered sitting in a pew beside my father hoping that Tiny Peck, a popular pretty girl with substantial breasts, would be in that day. I learned years later that my father had been ogling a woman (maybe two) in the choir - and perhaps being ogled back.
Although the Christian parts of the service made no sense (according to this theology Cynthia will have everlasting life and Brenda will not), the personal parts, remembering Cynthia's love of her family and of music were touching.
When the service was over, people were directed downstairs to a reception. I passed through a maze of rooms remembered now in dreams of dark, complex places. I quickly got to Charles and told him what I had come to say - that I knew what he was feeling. He seemed to appreciate that. Then following the instructions of the man standing there I banged open a sticky door to the outside and made my way back into the light.
After going by the funeral home to conduct some final business I returned to Mount Holly.
Christmas Eve (Day 16)
Weird night, not sad or weepy - not so far anyway, just weird.
Maybe as weird as the Christmas Eve I spent alone in 1960 when my parents and sister went to Florida and I stayed at home because I had to work. I think I went out with Brenda Willis. This Brenda, like the Brenda I would marry nine months later was beautiful. She too had a throaty sexy voice. (If my Brenda was Kim Novak, this one was Marilyn Monroe.) We went to a movie and then came back to her house. We sat in the living room with the tree while the rest of the family did something Christmas related in another part of the house, coming out once I think to acknowledge me. Brenda Willis and I had dated several years earlier. I hoped to get her to my empty house. But she was more complicated and vulnerable than I remembered and I felt guilty.
When I started dating Brenda Moser I told her with great sincerity that she had lovely brown eyes. Turns out that Brenda Moser had blue eyes. It was Brenda Willis who had brown eyes. My Brenda always thought that was funny.
Tonight, 49 years later, I also went to a movie - Avatar, the 3-D version. It was pretty good although the last half was predictable. There were several other solitary people in the audience, all of us sitting removed from everybody else. A mother and her grown daughter sat in front of me. Neither looked like science fiction types, more like women who would want to see something based on Jane Austen. They first sat side-by-side then the daughter moved one seat over, slumping down, maybe to get comfortable, maybe to sleep.
After the movie I stopped at the Waffle House in Belmont to get something to eat. The chunk of humming bird cake that Yancie, Allie and I baked this afternoon was pretty much gone. I sat next to a worn woman who wished people Merry Christmas and a man who talked about getting lumps of coal for Christmas. A little drunk maybe, he had the twangy accent and manner of the rednecks in Deliverance (the ones who were going to make Ned Beatty squeal like a pig). My waitress was a sweet girl whose baby was being tended by a tired looking young man sitting in a booth. (She told this to the worn woman.) I sat on the last stool at the counter. Two more tired women sat in the booth beside me. I quickly ate my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. I was afraid the drunk would try to engage me in conversation and that I might do something reckless.
Coming home, stopped at the traffic light at 273 and 27, I saw two people on the side of the road. One, a woman or a small man appearing to be puking. A bigger man gently rubbed the sick person's back.
More Stuff (Day 21)
People live on in their stuff (at least for those who knew the people, know the stuff - the very essence of existential meaning).
I see Brenda's everyday bath towel (somewhat tattered - she always gave me the best ones) hanging over a shower curtain rod in the little bath room, and a vase of artificial daisies gathering dust on the top of a commode tank in the big bath room, and cat statues symmetrically placed on a shelf that I mounted on the kitchen wall just over the dinette table (these and two living cats watch me eat my odd bachelor meals).
And papers, especially papers.
I am going through the papers that Brenda accumulated on a desk, computer stand and two-drawer file at one end of Yancie's old bedroom. (It was Brenda's office - although nothing to compare with her last office at the Department of Transportation where she covered two desks and three or four tables with piles of neatly organized papers.)
There are a lot of old receipts, some clipped and marked in her neat handwriting "paid by me". I throw them away. There are also piles of papers from various charities. She favored animal causes and had a soft spot for cops, firemen, and soldiers. I throw these and other offerings away, even the unopened envelopes with trinkets designed to work on her guilt. She knew what they were doing, but still could not bring herself to discard the note cards, and coins, and necklaces made in China by Dakota Indian children. I throw them away.
Fighting back occasional waves of tears I only keep the best stuff which I will put into boxes that will probably go into Yancie's attic and acquire the status of sacred objects.
It feels like I am getting rid of Brenda again, like making her get into the car to go to the Hospice House to die. But perhaps I am just winnowing her away, parsing her for the ages.
Scattering Ashes (Day 25)
We scattered Brenda's ashes at the site of the old Hatteras lighthouse. I stood in the center of the circle of stones, scooping up handfulls of the dry powder which was blown by the cold wind into the morning sun. Yancie did one handful. Some of the powder whirled back to brush her face.
My sister's ashes were scattered here in the winter of 2000. She and Brenda always liked one another so we imagined that Mickey would welcome Brenda to this place.
Randy, Yancie's husband was there as was Henry, my sister's husband. Henry's wife Grace stayed with Allie and Evan and helped Allie write a story about how the wind tossed her hat into the ocean when she and I were walking by the ocean.
(Henry believes in the possibility of reincarnation which might explain the eight feral cats who greeted us last night in the motel parking lot on our way back from dinner. One of the cats was likely possessed by Brenda and another one by Mickey.)
